After you have distro hopped for a while, many distributions begin to look the same. Even when a distribution is not based on an older one, it often seems to have the same default desktops as many others, the same curated applications, and the general goal of appealing to as many users as possible. However, no one could ever mistake KaOS [1] for such a distribution. Its homepage summarizes its goal: "To create a tightly integrated rolling and transparent distribution for the modern desktop, built from-scratch with a very specific focus." That focus is one desktop environment (Plasma), one toolkit (Qt), and one architecture (x86_64). The web page goes on to say that its intended audience is "users who have tried many Distributions and have found they prefer a Distribution that uses all its available resources to work on one [desktop environment] to make that the best it can be, and know that after their searches, the best for them is KDE Plasma." Some might question KaOS's definition of "best," but while Kaos acknowledges the virtue of diversity in distributions, there can be no doubt that this is a distribution whose developers are committed to doing things their own way rather than piggybacking on others.

In fact, much of KaOS's website is devoted to explaining its organizing principles (Figure 1). "There is no goal to make the most possible software available," the site explains. "KaOS will stay limited in size of the repositories, and will work on quality instead of quantity. That goal makes it clear [that] a large user base is not what is intended or expected."

Currently, the distribution uses the Linux kernel, but it is evaluating a transition to illumos, a free version of the Solaris kernel. By contrast, Plasma and Qt will "never" change. However, that is not to say that KaOS is dogmatic. "Most of the time it is believed KDE/Qt provides the superior tool," the website states, but it acknowledges that "there are a few applications where the GTK option is the only available of that kind (Inkscape, Ardour to name two), or in the case of web-browsers for example, the Qt options do not stack up to their GTK counterparts. For those instances, GTK applications are available, though their number will stay limited."

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